Tracing God's Providence: After the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Day 7

Good evening everyone. I don't expect you to believe everything I say, but the main thing is it's something to think about and to do your own research and come to your own conclusions. This is the way in which I've been thinking about things for many years. It's hard to find a label that adequately describes the different cultural streams going on in Europe. I've always thought that one of the major ones comes from Greece and then through Rome. Another one is the Germanic tribes, and I could also include the Scandinavians there, a similar kind of mythology. Of course, there's a contribution from the Bible called the Judeo-Christian tradition as well. I'm trying to figure these things out. The principle in it, as you know, in the last 400 years, distinguishes between two different kinds of streams that have developed within European history, especially since the Enlightenment. But as I've shown you in previous lectures, they go way back before the Enlightenment. You could say the Abel-type democracy, which in terms of worldview and roots is very much in the Judeo-Christian tradition, as I explained in other lectures, could be described as Hebraic. Then it talks about the Cain-type democracy, which you could say is pagan and has its roots in Hellenism. I was talking about how things developed in Rome and this kind of route. It's not only the principles that make the sustainable Abel-type and Cain-type democracy; it's something that other scholars in the 20th century also made interesting distinctions about. One is called J.L. Talmon, who made a distinction between liberal democracy and totalitarian democracy. He explained a straight line from the French Revolution to what happened in the Bolshevik Revolution and communism. A straight line from totalitarian democracy from the French Revolution, as I explained before, the roots of this whole stream of collectivism go back a long way, all the way to the Greeks and even to Plato and the words he put into Socrates' mouth about the state being the flywheel of our life, which is inherently totalitarian. Whereas the Judeo-Christian tradition is inherently liberal because one of the main values here is freedom, which again goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. God gave Adam and Eve a choice: eat the fruit or don't eat it; they had to choose. In terms of economics, you get the free market tradition, and then you get a socialist tradition with public ownership of property, state ownership of property, or at least a heavily regulated market and a heavily regulated and controlled economy with state involvement in all kinds of aspects of social life and civic life. Another great scholar, called Friedrich Hayek, from Austria, was given the Founders Award by our True Parents and was also a Nobel Prize winner. He made the distinction between what he called Anglican liberty, which is liberty that grew up in the Anglo-Saxon world, where what we call the Abel-type democracy developed, and Gaelic liberty, which refers to the very different understanding of the meaning of the word freedom or liberty that exists in France. These books are well worth reading if you have the time or interest. I read them in the mid-1980s and haven't read them again since, so honestly, I've forgotten most of what I've read. But anyway, they're well worth reading: Talmon's 'Origins of Totalitarian Democracy' and Hayek's 'Constitutional Liberty'—the first half is worth reading, the second half is quite dated now—and then 'Law, Legislation and Liberty,' which is his serious book. It's extraordinary, and if you want to know what the principle would look like in terms of social, economic, and political outworkings, I would think this book, 'Law, Legislation and Liberty,' is the closest I've ever come across. I mentioned he was given the Founders Award by our True Parents because he was a plenary speaker at at least two ICASUs in the 1980s. From these two different streams within the European tradition came different visions about how Europe should be after the war. This is how Western Europe should be after the war. Of course, the other big division was how Europe should be after the war, and the Soviets had their vision of the world as a one-party state, which I've talked about before after the end of the Second World War. In Western Europe, there were also different ways of trying to think about what should come. Churchill, in 1943, was musing about this, thinking about it when we win the war. Obviously, at that stage, in the depths of fighting, he was thinking about the future. We need to think about the future; what's going to come after the war? He postulated the idea of the United States of Europe because most people wanted to think about how to create structures within Europe that would prevent another devastating war like the First World War and now the Second World War. Based upon that vision Churchill had, something called the Treaty of London was signed. Significantly, it was in London, and it's very Anglo-Saxon in that sense. In 1949, there were 12 founding states, all the states basically in Western Europe, and it was intergovernmental. This meant that different representatives and different governments would meet together, and the basic values were democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. This is the origin of the European Convention on Human Rights. Obviously, because of the shattering experience of the war, what happened to the Jews in particular, and the refugee crisis after the war, they thought about what kind of basic rules do we need that every country joining the Council of Europe is going to uphold. They developed what's called the European Convention on Human Rights. I personally think there's no philosophical basis to it, to be honest; human rights have no philosophical basis at all, just basic assertions. One interesting thing was that the European Court of Human Rights was established, whose rulings are binding on all 47 European nations. This meant that people from any of these 47 different European nations, if they felt they weren't being treated fairly within their own country, if their human rights weren't being observed, could appeal beyond their own highest national court to the European Court of Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights, which had one representative from each of the countries on it, would make a decision, and that would be binding. The reality is that this doesn't work very well. Some of the representatives of different countries are not judges; they're not particularly qualified to act and rule in this kind of area. The European Court of Human Rights has become very interventionist, expanding the very simple description of human rights that have been written in this document, and they've started expanding them imperialistically. Even though Britain founded it, Britain will probably withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights in the next few years. Council of Europe member states maintain their sovereignty but commit themselves through conventions and treaties or international law and cooperate on the basis of common values and common political decisions. So there's no overriding political authority in the Council of Europe. They mainly concern themselves with education, cultural matters, and these kinds of things, and it's based on cooperation, not having a super level of control. These are all the members of the Council of Europe; they expanded from those original 12 founding members, and then with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, all the countries in Eastern Europe joined as well. I'm not quite sure which country this is—maybe Serbia, I would guess—and even Switzerland is a member, though Switzerland is not a member of many things. One thing I want to look at was the origins of the European Union, the evolution of the European Union, and where it came from. The first thing is to think about who was behind it. One of the main people was someone called Jean Monnet, a French entrepreneur, diplomat, and administrator, and an influential promoter of European unity from 1914. He was also Deputy Secretary-General of the League of Nations for several years, heavily involved as an internationalist in promoting international institutions and things like that. He was also an advisor during the First World War and suggested that it would be much easier to defeat Germany if Britain and France united their economies and worked together and coordinated their economies. He was also behind the idea that at the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles after the war, France proposed establishing a new economic order in Europe to try to control the economy. If you have a very strong economy, it means you have the power to build weapons and start a war; if you don't have a strong economy, you can't start a war. So the French minister proposed that Jean Monnet was his assistant and basically influenced that. That's why Jean Monnet has been called the father of Europe—a rather pretentious title in my view, but there you go. He was very involved in establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, which I'll look at in a moment, a predecessor of today's European Union. This is what he proposed: he proposed replacing the international authority for the Ruhr. After the First World War, an international authority for the Ruhr was established because the Ruhr in Germany is the main industrial center where a lot of coal and iron were produced. There was an international authority to try to manage the Ruhr. So he proposed replacing this with an agreement to pool French and German coal and steel industries. In 1950, the agreement of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany came about. It's a very similar thing to what happened after the First World War, where that part of Germany again came under some kind of control. So he came up with this proposal from Robert Schuman. Again, it was Monnet who basically drew up and made a declaration in the name of the French government. This landmark proposal, prepared by Monnet for Schuman, was known as the Schuman Declaration, which proposed the integration of French and German coal and steel industries under the joint control of a high authority open to other countries of Europe. This means this is an authority that stands above the French and German governments, an authority that is higher than the French and German governments and is able to make decisions above what the French and German governments would like to make. Through the consolidation of basic production, the institution of a new high authority whose decisions will bind France and Germany and other countries that join this proposal represents the first concrete step towards the European federation imperative for the preservation of peace. This was his idea of how to promote and establish peace: if we can get the coal and steel industries coordinated and establish a high authority that has authority over the existing governments, which they have to follow, we'll come back to that in a moment. Who else is behind it? Now, somebody called Spinelli, who was Italian, was a communist politician, political theorist, and European federalist, referred to as one of the founding fathers of the European Union. He was a communist and a militant anti-fascist in his youth and spent 10 years imprisoned by the fascist regime in Italy under Mussolini. Having grown disillusioned with Stalinism, he broke with the Italian Communist Party in 1937. He was interned during World War II, and along with fellow social democrats, socialists, and communists, he drafted the manifesto for a free and united Europe, most commonly known as the Spinelli Manifesto in 1941, which is considered a precursor of the European integration process. So there you have Jean Monnet working from the time of the First World War, then Italy with Spinelli, who was a communist. Even though he renounced Stalinism, it didn't mean he didn't remain a communist and a socialist, believing in state control of society and the economy and the planned economy. He just didn't like the way Stalin was going about it. There were quite a few Italian communists in prison at that time as well. He had a leading role in the foundation of the European federalist movement, which had a strong influence on the first few decades of post-World War II European integration in terms of providing the ideas, direction, and structures that should be adopted later. He helped to relaunch the integration process in the 1980s, which is when it slowed down. By the time of his death, he had been a member of the European Commission for six years and a member of the European Parliament for ten years.

Brussels is named after him, Stalinist. The 1987-88 academic year at the College of Europa and the 2009-2010 academic year at the European College of Palmer were named in his honour. This is just basic factual information from Wikipedia, so again, he is one of the main founding fathers of the European Union. If you look at the biographies of quite a few of them, you will find that many come from a socialist, communist, or fascist background. You might wonder, is there a Nazi link here? Well, very interestingly, if you look into history, the Nazis set up a German geopolitical centre in 1942 as a think tank to produce a long-range strategy to take over Europe in the event that they lost the war. The ideas were set out in the European Economic Community, published in 1942 during a conference at the University of Berlin. Germany then thought about different aspects going on here. First of all, if they lost, how could they still establish control over Europe? That's why in the UK, the European Union has often been mocked as a German outfit, basically one way for Germany to rule the whole of Europe.

In 1943, we saw the first conference of the EEC, led by Joao Kim von Ribbentrop, who made the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union. Thirteen nations, not including Britain, obviously, attended. These were nations conquered by Nazi Germany, and they thought that a united Europe would make Germany better able to combat the Soviet Union. This is one of the reasons Germany was involved in a life-and-death struggle with the Soviet Union. Instead of just making it Germany versus the Soviet Union, they thought if they could expand this to the whole of Europe fighting against the Soviet Union, they might be able to mobilise Europe in that way, making Germany better able to combat the Soviet Union. One wonders, to be honest, if some of this anti-Russian legacy, which permeates the EEC and the European Union, is still around. You might think I'm making this up, but those of you who can read German can find these documents from 1942, where the whole thing is outlined. This is incredibly important.

The person here, I think he was the leader of the German bank, Deutsche Bank, or whatever it was at the time, the national bank, had many very important and significant figures involved. If you go through that, I can't read German, but I've looked at it in English, and the basic titles here would make you think, 'Wow, that's just the way the European Union is today.' The basic outline of the way the European Union is today was outlined by this group of German politicians and academics in 1942. So, let's go back here. We have these different kinds of people involved: Jean Monnet from France, very much a planner, and then you have the Stalinists, Spinelli, and the Nazis. These are the kinds of people who are the founding fathers of the European Union. I'm sorry if many of you feel very offended by this, but this is just the way it is.

The European Coal and Steel Community was established in 1951, which I mentioned, with Monnet becoming the first director. He explicitly hailed it as a government of Europe, having this vision of creating a European government, a European executive, a European legislature, and a European court—all the functions of a national state on a European level. In the Treaty of Paris, he stated that this was the beginning of the government of Europe. Initially, it was treated with suspicion as a high authority with no oversight; they could just go around telling different countries what to do because it had authority above national governments. The new institutions were then brought in, so the European Coal and Steel Community was overseen by four institutions: the high authority I mentioned before, composed of independent appointees; a common assembly composed of national parliamentarians; a special council composed of national ministers; and a court of justice. These would ultimately form the blueprint for today's European Commission, European Parliament, Council of the European Union, and the European Court of Justice.

All of what is now in the EU was contained in this document. The ECSC stood as a model for the community set up after it by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, which is the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community, with which it shared its membership in some institutions. The 1967 Merger Treaty led all these institutions to merge into the European Economic Community. You might think this is a bit interesting; it's a coal and steel community. Why would a coal and steel community need a high authority, a parliament, a court of justice, or a legislature? Why do you need all of these just to administer coal and steel? It's a bit peculiar, to be perfectly honest. The reason is that establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, which is the pretext for establishing the European Union, had to start somewhere. They thought, 'Okay, let's start just managing steel and coal; we'll set up all the institutions there that we will need in the future.' But you don't need all these institutions to manage the coal and steel industries. You can see that right from the very beginning.

You might wonder why. Well, because many first bid to move straight to the complete political union of its original six members. That's what he wanted to do. He had been thinking about this since the end of the First World War, but it was rebuffed in 1954. Nobody wanted to do this; it was seen as too radical, too fast. He and his allies realised they could only achieve their real goals step by step, so they deliberately decided to conceal it, hiding it by pretending they were only seeking to create a trading arrangement. The Treaty of Rome in 1957 did begin by declaring their intention to work for an ever closer union and set about establishing all the core institutions needed to run a future government of Europe, even though this was far more than was needed to administer what was sold as its headline purpose: just the creation of a common market. How much more were these unnecessary institutions just to manage coal and steel? They had already had this plan in the back of their minds, being very French, all planned out in incredible detail.

It just so happens, I don't know if there was any contact between Monnet and this group in Germany or Spinelli; I need to look into that. However, they also overlapped by having overlapping ideas. So, it was all going on by stealth, secretly. You might say it was a conspiracy. In July 1961, Britain did not join the European Union or the EEC when it was first founded by the Treaty of Rome for various reasons. Britain didn't see any need and didn't want to be under the rule of a supernatural government, the European government. It had its own empire and Commonwealth and couldn't see the need to join with all these defeated, bankrupt nations. Some years later, Britain first applied to join the six. Harold Macmillan, who was Prime Minister at the time, and Edward Heath, who later became the next Prime Minister, were fully briefed by Monnet's allies about the project's ultimate goal of full economic and political union.

The papers released under the 30-year rule show that at the end of June, the British cabinet accepted their urging that for presentational reasons, this should not be revealed to the public or Parliament. British entry should be sold as being only about a common market, concerned only with trade and jobs. This means that the British Prime Minister Macmillan and Edward Heath later lied to the British people, claiming this was only about free trade and had nothing to do with creating a European government, a European defence force, or a European army—none of these things—which they knew was the ultimate goal because they had been told that by Monnet and his allies. For various reasons, Charles de Gaulle didn't want Britain to join and vetoed Britain's application because he wanted France to continue to model the EU or the EEC in the way he thought it ought to be before the Anglo-Saxons started to get involved.

When Heath applied for British entry in 1970, he perpetuated the same deception. His Europe Minister was sent to plead with Brussels to keep quiet about the already emerging plans for a single currency. It was said that British entry would involve no essential loss of sovereignty. A secret Foreign Office paper released 30 years later shows the government knew how important it was to hide and conceal just how untrue this was. Basically, in order to persuade the British people to vote to join the European Economic Community, the British government lied to the British people about what the ultimate goal and aim of the project was, which was to create a European superstate. The whole project has been based upon this kind of deception right from the very beginning, expanding step by step.

The expansion continued further with the Single European Act in 1986, which was sold as being only concerned with turning the common market into a single market. In reality, the treaty was just what its title indicated: another major move towards a single Europe, giving Brussels control over several other important policy areas, little concerned with trade. There was a gradual imperialistic expansion of the capabilities of the institutions of the European Union. In 1992, the Maastricht Treaty on European Union was brought out into the open, marking the next installment in the march towards the ultimate goal, centred not just on full economic and monetary union and a single currency, but also including moves towards giving the new European Union its own foreign and defence policies. These developments included the establishment of a European army and everything like that. The EU already has its own embassies all over the world, and gradually, the national embassies around the world will close because it will be administered just from the European embassy.

The Constitution for Europe, which you may remember, was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. In France and the Netherlands, there were referendums, and both countries resoundingly rejected the Constitution for Europe. Britain was supposed to have a referendum as well, but it was very clear it would be rejected in Britain too, so they didn't hold it. The Maastricht Treaty was also rejected, I think, by Denmark and Ireland. Virtually the same documents were smuggled back in as the more harmless-sounding Lisbon Treaty in 2007, where there wasn't a referendum in France or the Netherlands, but in Ireland, there had to be a referendum, and Ireland rejected it twice. However, the European Union kept telling them to vote again until they voted and got the right answer. This formalised the European Council as an official institution of the government of Europe. This is the way in which the European Union has developed.

As I'm sure you know, I am a sceptic; I'm not a great fan of the opinion, but this is just the way it has developed. It started off with the original six countries: Italy, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. Some years later, the UK and Ireland joined, and after the fall of Franco, Spain became a democracy and joined, followed by Portugal and Greece. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, things changed, and Sweden, Finland, and Austria joined as well. Austria wasn't able to join until then because of its situation. Then the Baltic countries joined, along with Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and finally Romania and Bulgaria. I think they are pretty much the last. A couple of countries in the Balkans joined as well. I often call it the donut state because Switzerland is not a member, and it is very uncomfortable to be in the middle of the European Union. The EU is trying to bully Switzerland into joining, but the Swiss keep refusing to join because they have to have a vote, a referendum about joining.

Switzerland has various deals with the EU, but as I said, the EU is threatening and bullying Switzerland to conform to European law. Switzerland is a funny place, just full of mountains. You might wonder, who wants to live in the mountains? People don't want to live in cities; they want freedom. This is basically why Switzerland repeatedly rejects joining any of the EU institutions. To do so would mean losing their freedom; they would no longer have the ability to vote on what laws they would have. Instead, all laws would be imposed from Brussels, and that's the last thing the Swiss want. My spiritual mother happens to be Swiss, Magdalena. She used to give me long lectures about the people who went to Switzerland. She said they were the people who didn't like feudalism; they wanted to maintain their sexual purity and go to the mountains where nobody could come along and harm them. There is something in that. If you want to escape from the cities, where all the organised crime is, where all the politicians are, and where terrible crimes take place against women in particular, the best thing to do is to go into the mountains and escape from all that.

Now, regarding the expansion of the EU, another country not in it is Norway, because it would lose its fishing rights. The UK is no longer in the European Union, and Iceland is not in the European Union either, yet it is doing very nicely without being in it. To be perfectly honest, the wealthiest and most prosperous countries in Europe are the ones outside the European Union: Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and the UK will probably end up there too.

Britain did not join the European Economic Community and instead set up an alternative in Stockholm in 1960, known as the European Free Trade Association. This included seven nations that were not part of the EEC: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The EFTA was very different from the EEC; there were no supranational institutions, making it merely a trading body that promoted free trade and aimed to eliminate customs duties on industrial products. However, it did not affect agricultural or fisheries products. Unlike the EU, which has a Common Agricultural Policy imposed on all member states, the EFTA allowed for more flexibility regarding individual countries' agricultural and fishing needs. Most of the EFTA countries eventually joined the EU, leaving only Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland outside of it. This illustrates the complexity of European institutions, which can be incredibly complicated to navigate.

The end of the Cold War, which I discussed in previous lectures, marked a significant turning point. The Divine Principle speaks of a peaceful restoration of Canaan on a worldwide level, which is a remarkable achievement. There was no war, and the restoration of the third blessing became possible. The privatisation and establishment of free markets allowed people to become owners and set up their own businesses, land, farms, and industries. This period also saw the worldwide expansion of democracy into Eastern Europe and beyond, alongside the breakup of the Soviet Union into its constituent parts. NATO and Russia agreed to become partners, leading to the reunification of Germany. When the Soviet Union was collapsing, it created a highly unstable situation, and the question arose: where do we go from here? No one, except for Father, expected the communists to collapse in 1988. The fall of the Berlin Wall shocked everyone, and people had to navigate this new reality as best they could.

The world was fortunate to have mature statesmen during this time, including Reagan, George Bush, Kohl, Thatcher, Major, Gorbachev, and others. When faced with economic, political, and military collapse, one would typically expect an enemy to invade. However, during talks between Gorbachev and Reagan, Reagan assured Gorbachev that the United States would not take advantage of the Soviet Union's weakness. This promise was crucial for Gorbachev as he had to persuade his Politburo to support his vision. Bush, Thatcher, and Major assured Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward. Many documents exist to support these verbal assurances, including statements made by NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner in 1990, who emphasised the importance of including the Soviet Union in a new European security structure.

At that time, the Soviet Union was not expected to collapse, and there was a sense of hope for peace. Gorbachev envisioned a European house where the Soviet Union could participate in European affairs. The Russians conceptualised themselves as Europeans, with a rich cultural heritage that included Orthodox Christianity and European literature and music. In 1991, Gorbachev expressed concerns about the dismantling of the Soviet Union and its potential weakness. He and the NATO council were against NATO expansion, and many NATO members shared this view. They aimed to prevent the isolation of the Soviet Union from the European community, demonstrating a strong determination not to allow Eastern European countries to join NATO.

However, the situation changed dramatically in the following years. In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO, followed by Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, and Slovenia five years later. The Baltic states, which share a direct border with Russia, were particularly concerning from a Russian perspective. Russia attempted to prevent Montenegro from joining NATO and expressed growing concerns as North Macedonia joined NATO. Finland and Sweden, previously neutral, also announced their intentions to join NATO. This expansion of NATO, which was initially portrayed as a defensive alliance, reached the borders of Russia, leading to feelings of betrayal and military threat from the Russian viewpoint. The desire of these countries to join NATO was understandable, as they sought protection from the perceived threat of Russian aggression.

One very important thing that took place during the breakup of Yugoslavia is the situation in Kosovo, which is part of Serbia. Serbia is a Slavic country, an Orthodox country, and culturally and historically very connected to Russia in many different ways, although it was never actually part of Russia. It was under the Ottoman Empire for a long period, and when the Ottoman Empire retreated, Serbia became an independent country. This desire for expansion sparked off the First World War, as there was an aspiration to create a greater Serbia. However, in one part of Serbia called Kosovo, many Albanians emigrated and moved in, and they are predominantly Muslim with a very high birth rate, which led them to become the majority population in that region.

When the Serbians became independent of Yugoslavia, they were not pleased with this demographic change. There was significant persecution and attempts at ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo. Many Albanians declared Kosovo a republic and sought independence from Serbia, which led to wars, including the Bosnian War. The Kosovo Liberation Army saw many Islamists and jihadists join their ranks, and NATO and Russia became involved. For Russia, it was deeply shocking that the West took the side of Kosovo instead of Serbia, as Russians assumed that Europe and America, being Christian, would support Serbia's claims over those of the Muslim Albanians in Kosovo. Ultimately, Kosovo was separated from Serbia against Serbia's wishes, creating a precedent that Russia would later reference regarding Crimea.

Looking at the background of the current situation between Russia and Ukraine, there was a time filled with hope and optimism following the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union. Major figures like Reagan, Bush, Thatcher, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin were all involved in this transition, and there was a genuine aspiration for a new era of peace. However, after elections, new governments often come in with different policies, sometimes ignoring or being ignorant of the policies of their predecessors. This ignorance about history has contributed to the current tensions, so it is essential to have a clearer understanding of Slavic history.

In the eighth century, the Slavs were primarily tribes without a unified state. The Baltic peoples and Finnic peoples were also tribal, while the Bulgars and Magyars were moving around. The Byzantine Empire, the heir to the Roman Empire, was well established, and Bulgaria was one of the earliest European states, highly developed and cultured. At that time, the Islamic Caliphate was expanding into the region, threatening Byzantium. This historical context is crucial for understanding the dynamics of the region.

The Kievan Rus was formed from these Slavic tribes, and the Vikings from Scandinavia began to travel down rivers, even attacking Constantinople. Rurik, a leader invited to become king, established the House of Rurik, with Kiev as its capital. His descendant, Vladimir, decided that Russia should adopt Orthodox Christianity from Constantinople. This marked a significant cultural shift for the region, but the Mongol invasion soon followed, leading to the domination of Kievan Rus by the Mongols, which transformed the mentality of the area.

As the Mongol Empire expanded, it included much of what is now modern Russia, except for a small area called Novgorod. The Mongol invasion had a profound impact on the region, and when the Mongols attacked, the Catholic Teutonic Knights from the west seized the opportunity to attack Russia. They were ultimately defeated, but this attack from the west, following the Mongol invasion from the east, was a significant shock for Russia. Over time, the Russians began to rebuild, centred on Moscow, which became known as Muscovy. This expansion was complicated by the geopolitical landscape, including the influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

During the time of Peter the Great, Russia was expanding but lacked access to the sea, which was crucial for trade and communication. After defeating the Swedes, Peter established St. Petersburg as a 'window on Europe' to modernise Russia and break its cultural and economic isolation. He recognised the necessity of having a warm seaport, as the Baltic Sea was frozen for much of the year. The pursuit of a warm seaport led to conflicts with the Ottoman Empire, which controlled access to the Black Sea, a vital area for Russia's aspirations to connect with the Mediterranean and the wider world. Under Catherine the Great, Russia expanded further south, pushing into territories previously occupied by the Ottomans and consolidating its empire.

By the 18th century, the Russian Empire had expanded significantly, incorporating various territories, including parts of Poland and Finland. The ethnic makeup of the Soviet Union was incredibly diverse, comprising Russians, Ukrainians, and various Turkic peoples. Following the defeat in the First World War and the overthrow of the Tsar, the question arose regarding the fate of this vast empire. Under Marxist theory, imperialism was seen as a higher stage of capitalism, leading to the dilemma of how to manage the Russian Empire after the Bolshevik Revolution. Joseph Stalin, appointed as the Bolshevik commissioner of nationalities, faced the challenge of addressing the complexities of this multi-ethnic and multi-religious state.

Going to do with all these different nationalities and ethnic groups that exist within the Russian Empire, he came up with a definition of a nation. He said a nation is a historically constituted stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, common territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in the common culture. To be perfectly honest, I think that's a very good definition of what a nation is; I can't really disagree with it. Anyway, he was quite a thinker and theoretician who wrote books on this to try to solve this problem. Some of these nations within the Russian Empire wanted to become independent. For example, Ukraine wanted to become an independent nation, although it had never been an independent nation before in its history. However, they developed a sense of nationhood, particularly during the 19th century, especially when they were under Polish-Lithuanian rule as opposed to Mongol rule. They developed all kinds of different institutions and became more connected. Part of Ukraine was under Polish rule, which became connected with Rome and the West, leading to the establishment of a unique church.

Socialist communists took over in Ukraine and wanted to make an independent state. The people in Moscow then saw the possibility of fragmentation and the breakup of the Russian Empire into independent states. The issue became, what are we going to do? The Red Army was sent into Ukraine, and it was not able to become an independent communist state; instead, it became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. All these republics became like that, creating a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a federal structure, with the capital in Moscow. In that sense, Russia was broken up into its constituent parts, but each of these parts then became a Soviet Socialist Republic with their own capitals, and a limited amount of independence was all part of this federal structure. The boundaries changed over the years, and as I said, Stalin was in charge of the policy, thinking about what to do. The communist vision was to make the whole world communist, not just Russia or the Soviet Union, but the entire world.

Stalin's policies included four basic tenets: centralisation and conformity, which essentially meant Russification. Even though he was Georgian, he decided that Russian culture and language were to bind the different nations together to create a single Soviet people. They talked about a new Soviet man and wanted to break down people's national identity so that they would conceptualise themselves as Soviet citizens, loyal to the Soviet Union rather than to their national identities. This was seen as necessary to prevent fragmentation. The goal was to make all these different nationalities and ethnic groups Russian. Native communist elites were purged and replaced with Russians or thoroughly Russified locals—Russian-speaking locals who had a Russian mentality. Native communists, even though they were communists, were removed because they included Ukrainians who wanted an independent Ukrainian communist state. Teaching the Russian language was made compulsory in all schools, and centralised authority in Moscow was strengthened while the self-governing powers of the republics were curtailed.

In theory, there were independent republics, but in reality, their governing powers and independence were constrained. Nationalities were brutally suppressed by means such as a forced famine in the Ukrainian Republic, known as the Holodomor. During the Soviet Union, there was the abolition of private property; independent farmers had their property, land, and farms confiscated. This was called collectivisation, and everything was run by a collective. However, when committees try to manage anything, it often results in disaster. Throughout the Soviet Union, there was famine; there wasn't enough food. In reality, Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe, with vast amounts of food. To feed people, grain was taken away from Ukrainian farmers, who were labelled as kulaks and brutally suppressed. About four million people in Ukraine died of famine, partly because Stalin wanted to break the Ukrainian sense of national identity. Ukrainian speakers in Ukraine suffered more than Russian speakers under Stalin's policies.

The federal state structure was preserved, but support for nationalities and regional talent was drastically reduced. Two or more unrelated ethnic groups were often arbitrarily combined within a single ethnic territory to weaken secessionist aspirations. The idea was that if you combine two ethnic groups into a single republic, speaking different languages, it would be very hard for them to unite and want to become independent because they would spend all their time arguing and fighting with each other. This was another of Stalin's policies: to draw these boundaries arbitrarily. For example, Solzhenitsyn noted that the borders of Ukraine were made by the communists, and many Russian lands were included. It's not just Putin who said that; Solzhenitsyn said it as well, noting that many parts of Ukraine are not ethnically Ukrainian but were included for political reasons. Stalin also divided ethnic groups with artificially drawn borders, so instead of putting the whole of an ethnic group within the same republic, he often divided them, making it difficult for them to unite and resist.

Another policy was deportation; seven ethnic groups were deported from their native territories en masse. For example, the Crimean Tatars, descendants of the Mongols, were deported to Siberia, along with many Germans. Various groups were rearranged, similar to ancient practices of moving peoples around to rule over them and destroy their sense of identity by separating them from their language, land, and community. Stalin's policies were devised to break up and destroy nations to create a new Soviet identity, a new Soviet man. He was quite brilliant in an evil kind of way. After the civil war around 1920, the USSR lost many territories, and after the First World War, parts of the old Russian Empire became independent. The borders were drawn and redrawn, never really fixed for long. This is how they were in the Soviet Union after the Second World War when most of the Russian Empire was reintegrated into the USSR, including the Baltics and various other parts, with basic borders that still exist today.

If we look at Crimea, it was conquered by Catherine the Great and became part of Russia for 200 years. When Ukraine became independent, Crimea remained part of Ukraine for about three years, but then it was reallocated back to Russia and was part of Russia from 1921 to 1954. The makeup of Ukraine is complex; the red areas represent ethnic Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian, while other areas have predominantly Russian speakers. There are ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian, and significant ethnic Russian populations as well. The area in Crimea is predominantly ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking. The Crimean Tatars were expelled, and Russian-speaking ethnic Russians settled in Crimea, making it very Russian. The education system in Ukraine has been in Russian, with Russian language schools, and there is a lot of resentment among Ukrainians towards Russia due to the Holodomor and the imposition of the Russian language. The ethnic and linguistic makeup of Ukraine is very complicated.

In terms of the history of Crimea, it was part of the Byzantine Empire for a long time. The Black Sea was a Byzantine scene until the Mongols came along and conquered the area. The Mongol Empire extended to Crimea, which later became known as the Crimean Khanate. The Russian Empire expanded further south, and Catherine the Great conquered Crimea in 1783. From 1783 to 1917, Crimea was part of Russia, as was the whole area known as New Russia. The Donbass region, where much fighting is taking place, includes the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were developed by two Welsh businessmen who emigrated there to establish industrial cities. A lot of Russians moved into this area, and the Cossacks, known for their independent spirit, often rebelled against Russian rule. Crimea remained part of Russia until 1917, then became part of Ukraine from 1917 to 1921. When the borders were rearranged, it reverted to Russia from 1921 to 1954, during which time Stalin deported the Crimean Tatars and settled Russian speakers there. In 1954, Khrushchev, the Secretary-General of the Soviet Union, transferred Crimea to Ukraine in memory of a treaty between the Cossacks and the Russians. From 1954 to 1991, Crimea was part of Ukraine, but this administrative transfer made little difference as they were both part of the Soviet Union. Crimea remained part of Ukraine until 2014, when Russia annexed it. Now, let's explore why Russia annexed Crimea. The first reason is that Crimea was part of Russia for 200 years, which is a long time. There aren't many countries in Europe whose borders have remained unchanged over the last 200 years. Crimea is an integral part of Russia, and many question who it belonged to before that, suggesting it was part of Russia because Russia conquered it.

Shouldn't they go back to the people before that? I said, well, okay, should I go back to the Mongols then? Whose did it belong to before the Mongols came along? It would belong to somebody else. You can't turn the clock back indefinitely. The point is, you might as well say that all the Europeans living in America should just go back to where their descendants came from. To be honest, Crimea was part of Russia for 200 years. I think that was settled. Crimea is also, as I said, where Sevastopol, Russia's only warm sea port, is located, and the base was the Black Sea Fleet. From a strategic point of view, Crimea is extraordinarily important to Russia. It has been a strategic goal of Russia for 300 years to establish a warm port and a naval base there.

After Ukraine became independent, Crimea was part of Ukraine. A deal was done where Ukraine sent all its nuclear weapons to Russia, and the Soviet fleet was split. I don't know if it was exactly half and half, but anyway, Ukraine inherited part of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, while Russia kept another part. Russia then had to lease this naval base, meaning it no longer owned Crimea; it had to lease it. I think the lease for Sevastopol was for about 25 years. Then there was a lot of political turmoil and division. Viktor Yanukovych was elected as the President of Ukraine in 2004. He was very pro-Russian and wanted Ukraine to have closer relations with Russia. However, he was accused of being elected through a rigged election, allegedly with Russian involvement. This led to the Orange Revolution, where he was overthrown, and the Supreme Court ruled that the election was indeed rigged.

New elections were held, and Viktor Yushchenko won. A lot of events transpired, including poisoning incidents. At this stage, Ukraine applied to join NATO in 2008. A couple of years later, Yanukovych won the election again and rejected the association agreement that the previous government was making with the EU, choosing instead to have closer ties to Russia. What I find interesting is that Yanukovych was elected wanting closer relations with Russia, while Yushchenko wanted closer relations with the West. This illustrates the division in Ukraine; roughly half of the country desires closer relations with Russia, while the other half wants closer ties with the West and Europe.

Historically, half of Ukraine was under the Lithuanian-Polish sphere and connected with Europe, while the other side was part of Russia and under the Mongols. The borders were drawn in a certain way, resulting in a divided country. There is almost a civil war going on within Ukraine between Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, along with Russian-speaking Russians. The situation is complicated. The Euromaidan protests occurred, and Yanukovych fled. For Russia, this was a huge shock because they realised the possibility of Ukraine leaving the Russian sphere of influence and joining the European Union. This is not just a trade organisation; it aspires to be a political and military organisation, and it also wants to join NATO.

When Russia realised this, it was an existential crisis. If Ukraine joined NATO and the EU, Crimea would then be part of the European Union and NATO, meaning NATO would have authority over Russia's only warm sea port. If Ukraine decided not to renew the lease on Sevastopol, Russia would be driven back 300 years, losing its warm port and its window to the world for trade and other purposes. From a Russian point of view, this was completely unacceptable. Russians have always assumed Ukrainians are Slavs, part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, connected by religion and language. The idea that Ukraine could suddenly decide to join the West was an existential shock for Russia.

This is why Putin moved incredibly quickly to annex Crimea immediately after 2014. While I can understand why Russia did it, the question remains: should it have done it? Personally, I think Crimea was part of Russia for 200 years, and Khrushchev did not have the right to transfer it to Ukraine. You cannot take part of someone's country and give it to another country. If Khrushchev hadn't given it to Ukraine, then when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Crimea would still be part of Russia, and much of this situation would not have occurred. I believe Russia got a raw deal in 1991. They should have said that if they were going to guarantee Ukraine's freedom and independence, they would like to have Crimea back again, reversing what Khrushchev did.

If Yeltsin had been more astute, perhaps he would have pursued this. The reality is that Crimea remained with Ukraine, and what should have happened next is that Putin should have held conferences at the United Nations to explain the situation. He should have articulated that 98 percent of the people living in Crimea are ethnically Russian, speak Russian, and want to be part of Russia. What Khrushchev did was illegitimate, and Putin should have asked the United Nations to arrange a transfer of Crimea back to Russia through international law. If the international community had understood their history, they might have found this reasonable. Instead, Putin moved very crudely and used force to achieve his ends, rather than going through a diplomatic or legal process.

Putin had warned NATO many times over the last 15 years about the eastward expansion of NATO. If Ukraine joins NATO, it would be an existential crisis for Russia. The leaders in Washington, Brussels, and London have been extraordinarily ignorant about Russian history, culture, and its legitimate concerns. Putin held a referendum, and the reality is that most of the people living in Crimea voted to join Russia. Even if they hadn't, many of them identify as Russian. In the early 1980s, Solzhenitsyn himself noted that many people living in Ukraine are not Ukrainian but Russian. He emphasised the importance of local referendums for the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine to decide whether they wanted to remain in Ukraine or join Russia. Unfortunately, that never happened.

After the annexation of Crimea, there was significant mistreatment of Russian speakers in the eastern Donbass region. The Ukrainians, for various reasons, wanted to 'Ukrainianise' them, which was a reverse policy of the Soviet Union's Russianisation. There was definitely mistreatment of Russian speakers in the east, and while Putin's claims of genocide were exaggerated, there was a cultural push to make Ukraine more homogeneous in terms of language. A lot of problems arose, which continue to this day. Zelensky was elected in 2019 and was determined to join NATO. He demanded that Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO, but I believe he was a brilliant leader but a poor statesman. The question is not whether Ukraine wants to join NATO, but whether it is wise to do so.

Personally, I think it is very unwise for Ukraine to join NATO or the EU because the country is divided. Half the country wants to be close to Russia, while the other half wants to be close to the EU. The solution is for Ukraine to remain neutral, allowing it to have whatever relationship it wants with Russia without being dominated by Moscow. There is nothing wrong with being neutral; Austria is neutral, and Sweden and Finland were not in NATO until recently. Switzerland has not been in NATO since the Second World War. I believe Ukraine should remain a neutral country, but Zelensky was determined to join NATO, and Washington was encouraging this, especially Biden, who had many connections with Ukraine. This will all come out one day.

The general trend over the last 20 years has been very anti-Russian. A lot of the anti-Soviet sentiment in America has become anti-Russian. The great American and British experts on the Soviet Union all said that NATO should not expand eastward because it would upset Russia. They recognised that it was a huge mistake to encourage Ukraine to join NATO. However, politicians argued that anyone who wants to join NATO should be allowed to do so. This is not wise; if you understand Russia and its mentality, you realise it is incredibly arrogant. When Trump came along, he wanted to change the anti-Russian policy of Obama and his predecessors, who were focused on expanding NATO to the east. Trump recognised that the main problem is not Russia, but China. He was the first to say that China is the real long-term foe, and now everyone is waking up to that reality.

Trump wanted to draw Russia back into the Western camp. The great wisdom of Richard Nixon was in realising that the Soviet Union and China, two great communist powers, were united. He needed to split them, but he couldn't communicate with Moscow. So, Nixon went to Beijing and shared with Chairman Mao that the Soviet Union had missiles in the far east aimed at China. Mao was shocked, and as a result, the relationship between China and the Soviet Union cooled considerably in the 1970s. This was a pivotal moment in geopolitics.

Against us and then Russia, then the Soviet Union invited Nixon to go to Moscow. This led to the arms reduction talks initiated by Nixon to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, which were a significant part of the beginning of the reproduction and the solution to the Cold War. The main point was that Nixon realised you have to divide the Soviet Union and China. What the West has been doing has been driving Russia back into the arms of China. Trump realised that was a mistake and was trying to draw Russia back into the Western camp, which was the vision of Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl. They believed that Russia, as a European country, should be part of this partnership for peace within Europe. However, the later Western leaders came after that were ignorant, arrogant, and very anti-Russian. I think Trump was trying to reverse that, which is why he faced so much attack and was accused of being an agent of Russia by the left and the Democrats who ultimately destroyed him.

Even though personally I don't find Trump very attractive in many ways, in terms of foreign policy, he was very clear and made good decisions. In the Middle East, for example, the Abraham Accords were significant. He met with Kim Jong-un, although that didn't go very far, and he also understood well where Russia should be located in the Western camp. There was a big shock, and Zelensky didn't understand this bigger picture. There was a huge shock in Russia as well. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church became autocephalous, which was significant because Kyiv is the birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church was in Kyiv, but later on, it was transferred to Moscow. Up until 2019, the Orthodox in Ukraine fell under the authority of the Russian Patriarchate, but many Ukrainians, encouraged by Americans, wanted their own national Orthodox Church independent of Moscow, which they achieved in 2019.

This was a huge shock for Russia because they believed they were all part of the same church and spiritual community. Kyiv's independence and joining the West broke up the vision of a united Orthodox Russian world. This act represents a cultural, existential, and religious crisis for Russians, which is very deep and not just about politics or military defence. There is a lot of talk about denazification and demilitarisation, but Ukraine was never a military threat to Russia. There was never any aspirational desire for Ukraine to invade Russia. It is important to note that Ukraine is not run by Nazis; Zelensky himself is Jewish. The term 'Nazi' is often used to label enemies, but it is misleading. While some Ukrainians in the west did collaborate with the Germans during the Second World War, they later turned against them when they realised the Nazis were not better than the Soviets.

The pretext of denazification and demilitarisation is just that—a pretext. Another excuse is to stop Ukraine from adopting Western culture, including LGBTQ+ rights, and to defend traditional marriage and families. However, if Putin is genuinely concerned about these issues, using tanks and guns is not the solution. If he truly cares, he should send in missionaries and engage in arguments, support education, and provide textbooks to combat Western culture. You cannot achieve this with military force. The ongoing conflict has created significant tension in mixed marriages between Ukrainians and Russians, which were once seen as normal. Now, due to the current situation, there is immense stress on families with ties to both sides, leading to devastatingly tragic outcomes. Solzhenitsyn suggested in the early 1980s that when Ukraine became independent, it should have a series of local referendums where people could decide if they wanted to remain in Ukraine or not.